The English major is underappreciated at UMW
4 min read
The English Department features literature and creative writing majors and is located in Combs Hall. | Violet Ayers, The Weekly Ringer
by DINAH MCKEMIE
Staff Writer
The English major is consistently undervalued, depicted as a useless degree that doesn’t teach any applicable skills and it’s been plummeting in popularity lately. It deserves a better reputation. Far from being useless, it teaches students a wide range of valuable communicative and analytical skills. The English major dying out is a huge loss.
A 2023 New Yorker article found that numerous universities, from Arizona State to Harvard, had all-time low enrollments in English and other humanities majors. Students across the country are turning to STEM and business degrees instead.
But what about UMW? Maybe a school so invested in the liberal arts, so committed to giving students a well-rounded education, would be able to keep its numbers up for the English major.
Maybe not.
UMW’s class of 2019 had 1,234 graduates. According to Academic Information on UMW’s website, 93 of them were English majors, 7.5% of the entire graduating class. In 2024, UMW had 973 graduates. Only 42 of them were English majors, 4.3% of the graduating class. That’s about a 43% decrease in popularity in just five years.
These numbers are pretty alarming when you consider what is lost as the English major dies. Engaging in critical thinking is a big part of the major. You can’t take everything you read at face value; you have to analyze it, evaluate what you see and make your best judgment. In a world where misinformation can rapidly spread on social media and AI-generated content falsifies images and videos, this skill is all the more important.
“I have heard that the English Major has been categorized as useless,” said Lia Fowler, a senior majoring in English Literature.
She continued, “I disagree. I don’t think the English major is useless. I think it’s very strategic in a lot of the ways that people might not think about, in how we analyze certain texts and different ways of communicating and in how other disciplines aren’t taught. And these are skills that we need.”
Writing, speaking and reading comprehension are skills that are needed in every job and every subject.
“The English major sets you up and gives you a lot of skills that are applicable to different workforces and disciplines,” Fowler said.
English majors also hone their analytical and creative writing skills. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated AI-generated writing becomes; being able to write a satisfactory essay yourself is an important skill. A recent study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wellesley College and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design found that students who used ChatGPT to write their essays had less brain activity while writing than students who wrote without AI. Additionally, the students who wrote using ChatGPT were less likely to remember what they had written. Writing an essay yourself makes you engage meaningfully with the topic. It makes the paper your own, uniquely human and something to be proud of. With the English major decreasing in popularity comes the decrease of great potential writers and more and more students who can’t write papers to save their lives.
The English major also demands collaboration and clear communication in the classroom. Classes are discussion-based, and students contribute their own ideas and build off of others’ as a major part of class. This develops students’ communication skills as they have to articulate their ideas clearly as well as analyze and respond to what their classmates say. Classes end up being majorly student-led, a collaborative experience that facilitates meaningful conversations. These collaboration and communication skills are valued not only in the classroom, but also with employers.
But misconceptions about employment may be one of the main reasons the English major has become so unpopular. I frequently get the same reaction whenever I share my major with someone. “You’re an English major? What on earth are you going to do with that?”
Consensus seems to be that you’re either going to be an English teacher or unemployed.
“I’ve got a lot of ‘what are you gonna do with that?’” said Sierra McKinley, a junior English major with a concentration in creative writing, “and the thing is, for me, I’ve just actually gotten a social media internship, because the creative writing degree is good for social media management.”
She continued, “I think people overlook English. I don’t think they realize what it is and how there are different options for English.”
The English major is not the pointless study of old books. The collaborative and creative thinking skills students learn apply to fields like law, marketing and office management.
According to a 2024 study, the unemployment rate for English majors is 2.3%, not far above the national unemployment rate of all college graduates (2.17%). When compared to the unemployment rate of business management majors (4%) and computer science majors (6.1%), the “unemployed English major” stereotype really is undeserved.
But employment rates and opportunities aren’t the only things that give a major merit. At the end of the day, literature and writing are an art that deserves to be appreciated. Studying this major means studying an important part of culture. The English major needs to stop being undervalued.
